Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why do rifled slugs kick SO hard?

Light guns and some of the crappiest stock designs. Yeah, they can hurt.

I have a slug gun with a nice, straight, fat custom stock on it. I can shoot slugs through it all day. My friend's factory-stocked 870 on the other hand, 1 or 2 shots and I'm more than ready to hand it back.

That's a big part of it: Most shotguns are pretty light and not really designed to be shot like a rifle.

These days a lot of slugs have been jacked up in velocity as well, and sometimes weight. Used to be a 1-oz. slug at 1300 fps was pretty much standard in 12-gauge, but somehow that was determined to be totally inadequate a few years ago.

If you can find any of the "law enforcement" 12-gauge loads with a 1-ounce slug at 1300 they are not too bad. They even kill stuff. My wife killed a calf moose with one last fall, but moose are known to be relatively wimpy. The same load might bounce off a really big Midwestern whitetail....

If you think slugs kick, go pattern a 3.5" 12 ga turkey gun.

JMHO but don't shoot HV slugs OR 3.5" 12ga and 10ga off a bench to sight in or pattern, unless you are a bit kinky about pain. With a fixed breach gun that's murder. Either stand with a rest or sit on the ground with elbows on knees. I calculated the recoil energy of my 9 1/4 lb 10ga pump and 2 1/4" loads @1210 fps once and it was elephant gun numbers. Forgot the formula now but HV ounce to ounce and a quarter slugs out of a lightweight 12 should calculate to misery also. FWIW

This thread brings back bad memories.

I grew up in a slug-state and killed a pile of deer using a 20 gauge pump with 2 3/4 inch shells. It worked fine but I won a 12 gauge pump with a fully rifled cantilever barrel one summer. I put a scope on it, bought some BIG shells and went to the range. I cut my forehead on about the second shot. On shot five I broke my nose. I slowly sighted the gun in over the summer. Once deer season started, I killed a nice little buck on the second day - and rebroke my nose. Towards the end of the week I killed my second buck and recut my forehead. I came home bloody after the second buck, laid the gun on our table and told my wife we had the sell it beacuse I wouldn't shoot it anymore.

Yep - I was shooting 3.5s from a bench in my above story.

I've got an old single shot 16g that's very very light weight, think it's an old Stevens.

As kids my friend and I would each shoot a couple of light weight bird shot rounds, which were actually bad enough but nothing to terrible.

We'd than convince whatever friend was with that they should try it out and we'd slip in a slug of some sorts and than try and hold back the chuckle before they pulled the trigger and damn near get knocked on their butts.



I wouldn't do that these days and I realize it's a terrible way to introduce someone to recoil, but it was good for many laughs back in the teen years.

I sighted in my 12 gauge pump from the bench for 100 yard shooting with 1 1/4 ounce slugs. Nine shots in and I was done for the day yet I can shoot this all day long standing. I have since learned the value of a recoil pad and many towels when sighting in a heavy recoiling gun. I did give the guys at the range some laughs with my wincing from the recoil though.

hehehehehehe, first punkin ball slug I shot was a 12 ga 3" mag in a Winchester Mod37A single. Plastic butt plate. Kicked a bit, hehehehheheheheh

Physics and stock designs.

No getting around either.

After 32 years of shotgun only hunting for me here in NYS, the two counties I hunt in the most have made rifles legal this year. I hope I NEVER shoot another slug as long as I live!

I've gotten three deluxe cases of scope-eye, every one out of a slug-gun with the high velocity slugs. You would think fools would learn, but every five or six years I need to re-learn. Have never been touched by one of my centerfires.

The first time I leaned into a slug-gun from the bench, shooting the Hornady high-velocity loads, I saw bright sparkly things all over, that looked amazingly like stars. There has to be an easier way.

Fun, ain't it?

So much that he's done it two times since....

I love recoil just as much as the next masochist, but the H&R 12 ga I got my son to start with was fuggin brutal.

Years ago I patterned a H&R Topper with some 3" buck loads. Didn't hurt but I couldn't hold on to the fore end. Guys next to me on the line dove under the bench on the first shot thinkin' the gun had exploded.

Couldn't really see the advantage when all was said and done and I've found 2-3/4" loads adequate since. Guess the thing that guides me is I don't try to take game at rifle ranges with a shotgun, slugs or buck. Work on the hunting skill and leave the long loads at the store. Waste of time in my opinion. If you find a buckshot load your gun patterns well and do a wee bit of target work with Forster slugs, they are both equivalent to Thor's Hammer inside 35 yards. That's experience, not speculation.

I live in Iowa so I'm pretty much forced to use slug-guns (when I don't use my handgun). I really despise slug-gun hunting. Grew up rifle-hunting whitetails in MO. They kick awful and I have never really thought of myself as recoil sensitive.

However, just read an article by Dick Metcalf about Savage's 220F bolt-action slug gun. It's a 20 gauge. I'm going to buy one and hope for the best.

I shot a lot of deer growing up with a slug gun. They work well.

Sight-in standing up resting next to a post--cuts the recoil problem way down.

The stock design is what gets ya IMO.

That's the way farmers hunted deer in IN 20-30 years ago. Buy some rifled slugs for the 12 gauge and go shoot some deer. Bad part was, they were like rabbit hunters and would throw 4 or 5 shells at a running deer no problem.

one of my buds got rid of his Encore muzzleloader after buying that Savage 20 gauge. Shoots very accurately and kicks less than the Encore. Of course, he believed he needed 3 pellets to shoot a deer...

I'm pretty recoil tolerant and I think the reason must be because when I was a kid I had the shotgun from Hell. A 20 gauge Stevens single shot that must have weighed about 3 pounds. High brass shells in that gun would rattle your teeth. One day my dad and I went squirrel hunting and they were really moving. We killed about 20 and after my last shot, I dropped the shotgun in pain. My dad looked at me like I was a girl. THEN he shot it. The next year I started using his 12 gauge because it kicked less and I've never shot that 20 gauage again.